Resizing vectors - Middle Class Measures

[catherinebrunet]

Good morning,

I am using a database with two income distribution vectors, for about 30 countries and from 1980 to 2010: the first vector is z, the poverty lines (ranges from $1 to thousand dollars, per month), and the second vector is h, the proportion of households within the poverty lines z (from 0 to 100%). As a fictive example, in 2005 in Malaysia the proportion of households (h) earning less than $1000/month (z) was 78%.

I aim to measure the proportion of the population (h) within specific income brackets (z), such as the proportion of the population earning between 0 and $1000 per month. However, I am unsure as per how to proceed; I tried to reconstruct new vectors from h and z using a loop but I was wondering if there was a simpler way to handle this problem.

Thank you much in advance!